The Long View: Blink It is pretty easy to make fun of Malcolm Gladwell, but his star isn't riding as high as it did ten years ago, so I won't pile on at this point. Gladwell did a good job writing books that were really popular, and that is worthy
The Long View: How to Prevent a Civil War This post by John Reilly is again relevant with the recent 9-0 decision by the Supreme Court to allow part of President Trump's travel ban to take effect. If you believe John's analysis from 21 years ago, this is to be expected from a Court that
The Long View 2005-05-02: Human Mice; Roe Misapprehension; Gödel versus Immanence I remember being struck by this story when it came out. If your human-mice hybrids start acting too human, the obvious solution is to just kill them all! Human Mice; Roe Misapprehension; Gödel versus Immanence No, deranged scientists are not trying to create human-mouse hybrids that have squeaky voices and
The Long View 2005-04-28: China; Quagmire; My Folly Contra John Reilly's prediction here: Gordan Chang is still wrong. China; Quagmire; My Folly Anyone in immediate need of a theory of the post-communist world, past and future, should take a look at David Brooks's column in today's New York Times, Mourning Mother Russia:
The Long View 2005-04-26: Exploding Pet Peeves When Pope Benedict XVI was elected, many European and American Catholics reacted with dismay, because Joseph Ratzinger was so conservative. Except that he really wasn't. Ratzinger had taken his job at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith very seriously, but he was not particularly extreme. Rather,
The Long View: How Abortion Builds Better Families I was going to say that John missed the big picture on replacing AFDC with TANF in the late 90s: Chronic, mass illegitimacy is a product of the lifestyle of the population that has become dependent on AFDC. If the program is removed or modified, there might be a temporary
The Long View 2005-04-24: Sleepers: Issues & Diets Under my heading nothing ever changes, we have this prescient post from John Reilly in 2005 where he correctly intuits that immigration will be the largest domestic political problem across the West. He also notes that the character of the problem is quite different in different places, since the typical